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Former Interior Minister Gerhart Baum (2021)
Photo: Matthias Rietschel / picture alliance / dpa
In the past two years, science and politics have largely agreed that the corona virus poses a great danger.
However, the assessment differed on the question of whether and which containment measures must be taken.
In addition to the AfD, the FDP in particular opposed tough measures in the fight against the pandemic in the Bundestag - much to the chagrin of their former top politician Gerhart Baum.
The 89-year-old liberal has now sharply criticized the Corona course of the current party leadership and partly accused her of irresponsibility.
Distrust of state intervention is "an indispensable characteristic of liberal politics," said the 89-year-old former Federal Minister of the Interior (1978 to 1982) to the editorial network Germany.
»But this must not lead to the necessary responsibility for the common good falling by the wayside.«
In the most recent state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, the FDP failed “disastrously”, as Baum put it, “also because of its pandemic policy”.
Nevertheless, FDP Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki announced that it would be continued in the fall, he criticized.
"Populism that the voters didn't follow"
The FDP had campaigned for the protective measures to be relaxed, "even if it was not responsible, as in autumn 2020, when the hesitation had to be paid for with a lockdown".
The FDP policy was "at times a piece of populism that voters did not follow," said Baum.
»They simply could not imagine that all other democratic parties, all federal states and science were on the wrong track.«
There is increasing debate within the coalition about which corona protection measures should be set for the fall.
The FDP in particular is still on the brakes.
mrc/dpa
